The trade show has been buried several times: when the internet arrived, then during the pandemic, when video conferencing seemed set to permanently replace face-to-face meetings. And yet the format is still here, and its numbers are climbing again. So, decline or revival? The answer is more nuanced than the debate suggests: the trade show is not disappearing, it is transforming.
The Shock, Then the Rebound
The pandemic inflicted considerable losses on the events sector, put by UNIMEV at several tens of billions of euros once direct activity and knock-on effects are combined. Many bet at the time on a lasting shift to all-digital. That shift never happened. As soon as restrictions lifted, demand for in-person events came back, and the momentum has held up year after year. In 2025, trade shows recorded B2B attendance up more than 12% year on year according to the UNIMEV Observatoire: that is not the profile of a dying format.
Why In-Person Attendance Holds Up
The underlying reason is simple: some things cannot be done remotely. Feeling a product, comparing materials side by side, building a trusted contact, picking up on a trend by walking the aisles, multiplying unplanned encounters over two days. A trade show condenses into one place and one moment what would otherwise take months of scattered prospecting. Video conferencing has replaced some meetings, not the dense experience of a trade show. Digital has become a complement, not a substitute.
What the BUMP Says: The Trade Show Media in Communication Budgets
One indicator deserves close attention, because it measures not attendance but companies' intent: the BUMP, the Baromètre Unifié du Marché Publicitaire, jointly produced by IREP, France Pub and Kantar Media. It aggregates advertisers' communication spending and isolates the share devoted to fairs and trade shows, making it the thermometer of companies' confidence in the trade show as a media channel.
Its recent readings are instructive and temper the prevailing optimism. Company spending on fairs and trade shows took much longer to recover than attendance: in 2022, it still stood at 1.1 billion euros, a clear retreat from 2019. In other words, visitors came back before budgets did. The BUMP also notes that the events category, which covers sponsorship, patronage, public relations and fairs and trade shows, remains sensitive to base effects: after the exceptional peak linked to the 2024 Games, a slowdown was expected in the following year.
This gap between attendance and investment is precisely what defines the current period: companies are returning to trade shows, but with tighter budgets and more precise expectations for return.
What Is Really Changing: Leaner, More Targeted Formats
The real transformation is not in visitor volume, which is picking back up, but in the format itself. Exhibition floor space remains below its 2019 level, around 89% according to the UNIMEV Event Data Book: stands are getting more compact, costs are being rationalised, and environmental footprint has become a central criterion. On the visitor side, the emphasis is shifting from quantity to quality: a show is increasingly judged on the relevance of the encounters it enables, not on attendance figures alone. Hybrid formats, which extend the event online before and after, have become standard practice without replacing the physical core.
A Sector That Is Structuring Itself
A sign that the sector is not retreating but consolidating: on 24 July 2025, in Angers, the French State, UNIMEV, industry professionals and regional representatives signed a new five-year sector agreement for "business tourism and events", built around 32 actions. A declining sector does not sign a five-year strategic plan with its supervising ministries. The movement is towards more discipline, more data, more professionalisation.
The Verdict
Neither decline nor a simple return to pre-crisis levels: reinvention. The trade show remains a powerful sales and market-intelligence channel, but it has become leaner, more targeted and more demanding. For visitors and exhibitors alike, this does not change the underlying question, it sharpens it: not all shows are equal, and choosing well has never mattered more. This is precisely Agoris's reason for being: helping you identify, show by show, the ones genuinely worth your time.
Sources
BUMP, Baromètre Unifié du Marché Publicitaire et de la communication (IREP, France Pub, Kantar Media), cited in successive editions of the UNIMEV Event Data Book: methodology based on reconciling Kantar Media's gross advertising pressure data, net investments declared to France Pub, and advertising revenue collected by IREP. UNIMEV Observatoire des événements, 2025 annual report. UNIMEV, Event Data Book editions 2025 and 2026. "Business tourism and events" sector agreement, signed 24 July 2025 in Angers.